NGOs Statements on Casting treaty in Plenary November 16, 2016
The representatives from broadcasting organizations association might be over-reaching again and are asking for copyright like rights, right to prohibit and authorize, re-transmission on the internet, post fixation rights, up to 50 year terms….the NGOs had strong words, warning of unintended consequences for copyright owners, journalists and the larger public and user of the internet.
CRIC
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I have think that the minimum mandate — mandatory protection plus option protection would be better under this circumstance. For all this, most important point is what sort of protection of transmission or transmissions should be minimum mandatory protection?
We have to make our further consideration on this.
As to the rights to be granted, it’s the basic right of copyright. The main purpose ever broadcast treaty is to fight against policy. These two rights are fundamental tool for fighting against policy and unnecessarily evil if they would be optional. That is the bottom line. Concerning the prebroadcast, there are many cases by layman that are stolen and uploaded on website without authorization before broadcasting. Even if if it would be protected by the broadcast treaty, without adequate protection of broadcast signals that would be as effective as bucket with bottom.
Thank you,chairman.
CHAIR: Thank you. Very focused on what we have discussed.
You made reference that one delegation said in the right, we should include the right of fixation and reproduction. That happened.
And then the second is KEI.
>> KEI: Thank you very much. On this question of right to prohibit or the right — or authorize or the so-called positive or negative rights, we would hope that you would stick with the right to prohibit. This will be cases where if you have compulsory license, there’s exceptions a right to authorize will make a bigger claim in remuneration and it will impact copyright owners in a negative fashion.In our — more generally, in our opinion, every effort to give broadcasters strong or expanded rights and materially transmit, but do not own beyond that, which is absolutely related to addressing legitimate antipiracy concerns, results in weaker and restricted rights for copyright owners and makes users worse off.
The main issue in the discussions the last day and a half of interest to us have been the boundaries as to who the beneficiaries and what works will be affected and how. If the SCCR is going to extend protections to material originated on the Internet, and download it on demand, as has been proposed by several countries this week, it opens the door to a much broader and consequential treaty that has impacts far beyond the purpose of protecting traditional broadcast from signal piracy.
We have not heard any workable way to expand the treaty to material originated on the Internet, and downloaded on demand that stops treaty from creating a massive expansion of related rights that are contrary to the notion that we use copyright to determine the ownership of works.
To the extent that the delegates go far in creating expansive rights for works who transmit works, including the proposals for making it available and for post-fixation rights you are going to need robust exceptions and that will make the conclusion of this treaty even more difficult.
Thank you.
>> CHAIR: Thank you very much for reminding us the importance of exceptions and limitations. That’s another part of the treaty to be discussed. And the importance of the finding a reasonable scope of protection. That’s part of the discussion until now.
>> CHARISMA FOUNDATION: Thank you very much, I speak on behalf of charisma, a civil society organization from Colombia. We focus on human right and policy. I would like to speak to this committee in order to share a few examples, which showed the dangers which we are moving towards, especially in the discussions here in developing this treaty. This is touch by KEI. We have identified a case of a Twitter user who was uploading content and his account was blocked, due to supposed infractions of copyright and the retransmission of the Colombian football league.This person was sharing short videos of no more than 90 seconds, just showing his passion for this football team. So videos some of football players and matches. The videos were removed, just showed the TV screen, which was showing the matches but they were very short videos. This was not a professional broadcaster, but just one person like any one of us, who regarded the match as shown on his TV screen and then uploaded to the Twitter account. This wasn’t quality recording either. And it wasn’t a case which could represent a real economic detriment to the broadcaster. Despite this, though, the user, in fact, had less than ten followers as well on Twitter. So the use of force was disproportionate because the platform was allowing them to broach certain items. He also had a disability and his Twitter account being blocked was detrimental.
Charisma believes that we need to ensure that the instrument adopts protective measures which are very limited and we need to ensure that rights are protected in the minimal aspect so as not no infringe on the rights of others.
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>> JBA: The Japan broadcaster association, accept the comments during the 18 years from the start of discussing the agenda regarding the protection of broadcasting organizations, the issue of unauthorized uses of broadcast signals over computer networks has been growing serious. Though we have been fighting against such piracy we cannot see the goal to serve it, as the piracy rapidly is spreading on the global scale. To cooperate with such piracy, we think it’s essential conclude the broadcasters treaty as early as possible.
Thanks to the revised consolidated text, the SCCR 33/3, some key issues seem to be deeply discussed in this session. As to object of protection, we need further discussion on what type of transmission should be protected at this circumstances. In addition what we are also concerned is about a missing reference about fixation of broadcast, and the right after fixation.
We tried to stress the importance and the need to adopt a document which includes the right to fixation or broadcast, and the right after fixation, as already proposed by several Member States in the previous sessions. Especially we think that adopting the right act of the fixation will be important to prevent the ongoing piracy of broadcast signals, especially over computer networks.
Lastly, as many Member States mentioned in plenary, we strongly hope that the timetable for the diplomatic conference for the broadcast treaty will be made with mutual respect and understanding among Member States. Thank you.
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>> CIS: The centre Internet and society. We would like to associate ourselves by the statements made by KEI and dah his are a foundation. First on SCCR/33/5, the note to protect broadcasting organizations which is a document presented by the delegations of Argentina, Colombia and Mexico. This document is problematic, as it tries to extend the scope of the treaty to apply to Internet originated content and thus the extension Internet transmissions. This has also been manifested in the on demand material and catchup services in the discussions over the past two days.
Mr. Chair, I would like to read today that the mandate of the General Assembly was confined to broadcasting and cablecasting of broadcasting organizations in traditional sense only. It should as such be limited to the type of transmission exploited by traditional broadcasters, as stated by the delegation of Iran.
Further, Mr. Chair, whereas EU, China, Argentina, Colombia and Mexico continue to speak of technological adjabsments to justify the expansion of the rights under the trey, there’s still no discussion on the inadequacy of existing international league of instruments to address these advancements and justify the broadcasters ask of an additional layer.Finally, reiterating the Asia Pacific Group, the conversing of this treaty should be balanced and take into account the right holiers and equally important it should take into account other competing I ams and copyright, including the public interests in scientific cultural, social progress and promoting competition. Thank you.
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>> ABU. Dear delegates, this is Asia Pacific broadcasting union. We have 280 members and we want to — our protection. It’s important to protect the catch up service at this moment and to the future technology, because it is now — we are traditional broadcasters but we also provide service on all mat form and stage. This is very important because it is requested by the market and the audience want whatever they want and catch up service is already part of our broadcasts in this moment and the future. This is not only Asia but worldwide. So please concern it.
Secondly, note — we noted that the note proposed by Argentina, Colombia and Mexico is welcomed and shall be considered by our SCCR meeting, especially on commanding a diplomatic conference and by the spring of 2018 at the latest. Thank you.
>> CHAIR: Thank you, European Broadcasting Union.
>> EUROPEAN BROADCASTING UNION: No? Yes. Lights. Thank you Mr. Chairman, I want to make three short comments, first of all, of course, thanks to all the delegations and the Chairman and the Secretariat who has been working hard to improve the text.
The second comment is we support those delegations which have referred to the need to have a full treaty text on the table at the next meeting, because that would certainly facilitate and streamline a discussion and thirdly, we also would hike to refer to the proposal made by Argentina, Colombia and Mexico, which included a concrete timetable and end date. We think it would be important that the chair’s conclusion include the fact that this proposal has been made. That is very important for the stakeholders of this discussion.
We know that some delegations have said they will discuss that at the next meeting, but that, of course, can be set in the document, in the conclusions. Thank you.
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>> IFLA. I’m speaking on behalf of the International Association of libraries with important collections of audio visual material that reflect our cultural and documentary history as part of the public interest mission, libraries are in charge of preserving this material and making it available to students, researchers and the public at large. We thereby help to ensure access to knowledge. Any new layer of rights that affects access to content, particularly that which is already in the public domain is therefore potentially antithetical to library’s mention. The proposed treat I would risk damaging the public interest unless several safeguards are put in place. We will not actle exceptions and limitations but they should be full, robust and ideally mandatory but as concerns the discussions today, it can not be the case that a new transmission of previously broadcast material creates new rights. This risks taking works out of the public domain with no benefit to the original creators.New rights for broadcasters must not make the search for all potential right holier more onerous and more likely to fail. This is the risk of postfixation right to incorporate it into the treaty.
It would be counterproductive if WIPO were to make this worse at the time that individual countries are trying to solve the works.
In short, the solution must be to keep any new rights to a minimum, both in terms of subject and scope to avoid any damaging term extensions, and to ensure that new rights are accompanied by robust set of reflections that are flexible and reasonable and able to accept unforeseen changes in content and new use of content. Thank you.
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SAA: Thank you Mr. Chair. America’s largest organization of archivists appreciates the opportunity to make a short intervention on the topic of broadcasting. For decades, archives have included not just paper records but also important sound and video recordings, many of which come from broadcasters. These are invaluable documents for both cultural heritage and protecting citizens rights. The major events of our time are perceived by citizens in terms of videos, especially items that have been broadcast. These are important cultural objects.So regardless of whatever measures are put in place to protect the broadcast signal for traditional broadcasters, it is sow essential that the new rights don’t end up by accident or intention adding any further layers on the copyright protection that exists already in the content. There’s clear danger in any approach that attempts rather impossible task of future proofing a treaty.
The SAA thus wishes to reiterate that any treaty on broadcasting should number one be focused on the presently known universe, two be technologically neutral and, three, shouldn’t result in any additional residual littlers of rights over the content either directly or via technological protection measures, thus it’s imperative that work on broadcasting continue in parallel with meaningful work on exceptions.
Thank you.
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>> INTERNATIONAL FEDERATION OF JOURNALISTS: The IFJ congratulate the chair and the Secretariat on the work on this difficult discussion. It’s lunchtime nearly and I would hope to have the opportunity to give comments about the essential needs of our societies for the work of the 600,000 journalists in 142 countries that the international federation represents, specifically on Broadcasting Treaty.We do acknowledge the desire to co-define internationally the rights that broadcasters have in many Member States already to object to unauthorized useful profit of their transmissions, but we are concerned about the laudable, the positive drive to be technologically neutral, citizennally creating new rights which goes across virtually everything. If the definition of a broadcaster does include somebody who — or an organization which first puts material out on the Internet, then effectively the new right applies to practically everything, but a handwritten manuscript and a performance on the Stradivarius. And we therefore recommend that the beneficiary be — in the — the eventual treaty be very carefully drafted to refer to traditional broadcasting organizations.
Even in that case, we are concerned about a gatekeeper effect, whereby however much the new neighboring rights, and the treaty states that it does not affect the rights of right holders and, many many of our 600,000 journalist members work for broadcasting organizations, however, much it is protested it doesn’t affect the underlying rights.
If you want to reuse a broadcast, you must contact the broadcaster first before you talk to any of the authors or performers and we urge Distinguished Delegates to be very careful to not — to — in their further discussions, not to create such a gatekeeper approach which in effect puts the broadcaster between the author and or the performer and the end user.
CHAIR: Thank you very much for your powerful intervention. IREPI has the floor.
>> IREPI: Thank you very much, chair. We have a group of more than 15 broadcasters from our region. Some of these broadcasters are traditional broadcasters, and we broadcast our signal over the Internet as well.
What we would hike to say is that we fully support the comments made by Colombia, Argentina and Mexico. Deferred transmission, simultaneous and near simultaneous transmissions feed to be part of the objects of protection. It would be very useful to end this week with a working plan, and targets set out which are clear. We need a date to convene a diplomatic conference.
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>> The Argentinean association of interpreters is a collective of people with connective rights which are interpreters and the artists in Argentina would like to thank the chairman under his chairmanship and would like to ink that the various delegations represented here for their efforts in order no move forward, discussions, analysis and various proposals on the consolidated and revised text on the definitions and on the of protection, and are rights which need to be considered as prepared by the Chair.
It is currently still being analyzed. I would like to speak about a few specific points at this present time. I will talk to other points at another time as well. I would like to say now that we don’t want to affect the human rights such as though represented by my collective, and the representatives of my organization, therefore, with he would continue to urge you not to infringe upon these rights. The efforts carried out in this session would also need to analyze and overcome threats and actions of legal organizations as interpreters, musicians and other performers in terms of our human rights and digital world.
In some aspects of many of these issues have been highlighted by the GRULAC document, SCCR/31/4 and we would like to come back to this and reiterate what has been said in the December session last year. For our organization, we believe that we need to focus on public communications or transmissions. For those, we need the rights of remuneration, for the collective management for artists, interpreters and other performers. I would like to thank once again the chair and various delegations represented there.